Good morning.
There was more "breaking news" in a Donald Trump speech last weekend, but it was hardly reported, while US diplomacy in France also lacked class.
The US president declared the end of Nato's Article V, said he would rename the Strait of Hormuz the "Strait of Trump", and invade Cuba "next", while speaking at a Saudi business forum in Miami last Friday (28 March) evening.
"Nato just wasn't there. They just weren't there … now, based on their actions, I guess we don't have to be [there for Nato], do we?," he said, referring to allies’ refusal to join the Iran war.
"That sounds like a big story. Yes, sir? Is that breaking news? I think we just had breaking news," said Trump.
He was quoted by newswires, but largely ignored by newspapers and TV, as it was nothing new: Trump verbally rage-quits Nato every week, before later changing his mind, amid other U-turns.
There are Trump-parody accounts on X, but they posted real quotes from Friday’s speech, showing what a joke he has become.
Trump also did mock impressions of French president Emmanuel Macron, insulted Saudi Arabia, and hand-mimed US missile strikes on Tehran, in his 63-minute-long, often illiterate ramble.
“I said: 'Emmanuel, would you like to help?' [Macron said:] 'Yes, yes, yes. Uh, as soon as the [Iran] war is over, we will send ships'," Trump said, while adding that the Saudi king, who was in the front row in Miami, was "kissing my ass”.
And if you thought US secretary of state Marco Rubio was better — he isn't.
His main "Scoop" from a G7 meeting in France on 27 March, as entitled by US website Axios, was that he had yelled at EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas about Russia.
"'We are doing the best we can to end the [Ukraine] war. If you think you can do it better, go ahead. We will step aside,' he fired back [at Kallas inside the meeting], raising his voice", Axios said.
Speaking to EUobserver in 2020 at the end of Trump’s first term, US historian Anne Applebaum said: "The problem with him [Trump] isn't that he’s stupid. [It’s that] he’s very uneducated. He knows very little about the world”.
His narcissism made him "confusing", she said: "One of the reasons why he was always so hard for people to understand was that his only interest - I mean, his only interest - was himself".
“We’re lucky we got that kind of autocrat, who didn’t know how government works. He could have done a lot more damage, if he understood what he was doing," Applebaum added at the time.
Half-way through his second term, he's done a lot more harm to the US, Europe, and the Middle East, whether he knows or cares what he's doing.
Europe is waiting for elections in Hungary on 12 April in the hope its illiberal prime minister, Viktor Orbán, loses and the EU Council can go back to normal without his Russia vetoes.
More importantly, it is waiting for US mid-term elections in November and the presidential election in 2028 in the hope Trump is weakened, that the next US leader is normal, and Nato is saved.
But if a week used to be a long time in politics, then events are moving so fast in 2026, that even though Trump's weirdness has become boring, I wonder what there will be left to salvage in transatlantic relations two years from now.
Andrew Rettman, foreign-affairs editor
What else you need to know
France would only lead a Hormuz mission “once calm returns, once the military objectives of the US are attained”, it said after EU powers met the US secretary of state. Marco Rubio said: “Ukraine is not America’s war, and yet we’ve contributed more to that fight than any other country in the world.”
Legal experts call it undemocratic; the official watchdog calls it a failure of integrity. After a wave of farm protests rocked the continent, Brussels gutted its green protections at record speed, leaving a permanent scar on European law. This investigation goes inside the closed-door meetings and exclusive interviews to reveal who really sat at the table to rewrite the rules of Europe’s most expensive policy.
With CO2 concentrations now at the highest level in the last two million years, Earth acts like an overheating smartphone unable to vent heat. 91 percent of this excess energy is surging into oceans, fueling “nuclear-grade” storms and $60bn wildfires. This isn’t just warming — it’s an accelerating climate emergency threatening global security and economic stability.
The European Parliament has voted not to prolong an interim derogation from e-Privacy rules that allows online service providers to voluntarily detect, remove, and report child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and grooming. Meaning this essential safeguard set to expire on 3 April 2026. This decision is deeply concerning for child protection.
On Odesa’s sunlit Langeron beach, life resumes under gunfire as residents defy drones and propaganda alike. From fallen imperial statues to frontline defences, this port city fights not just Russia’s attacks, but the lingering shadows of empire today in the streets.
In an escalation of Hungary’s campaign against independent media, award-winning journalist Szabolcs Panyi has been accused of “espionage” following his investigations into the Budapest-Moscow hotline. In this exclusive interview, Panyi warns that the Orbán government is officially importing the “Putin model” to criminalise investigative reporting, turning national security into a tool of political theatre.
Ukraine’s attack on oil terminals near St Petersburg prompted conspiracy theories of Nato collusion, but serious Russian bloggers did not take the bait.
The situation in Cuba is worsening day by day. According to the United Nations, the country has been pushed to the point of imminent humanitarian “collapse.”What are the reactions of Europeans?
At the beginning of the year, President Xi Jinping reached a series of important consensus with several leaders of European countries, charting the course and providing strategic guidance for the development of China–Europe relations.
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten